Zune HD Twitter app now live UPDATE: it censors tweets! — It was a slow rollout today, but the promised Zune HD Twitter app is now live in Marketplace. We've been playing with it a little since we got it, and while it's definitely one of the more attractive mobile Twitter clients we've come across …

Facebook releases first-ever demographic look at users — In its earliest days, Facebook was primarily a white and Asian phenomenon. No more. In the first-ever study of the race and ethnicity of its U.S. users, Facebook said Wednesday that blacks and Latinos have joined the social networking giant …

Facebook Data Team: How Diverse is Facebook? — How Diverse is Facebook? — In order to make Facebook as open and connected as possible for everyone, one of our goals is to understand how different populations of users join and use the service. With that objective in mind …

Browser Size: a tool to see how others view your website — In a newspaper, the most important story is featured on the front page. If it's a really important piece, then it's placed “above the fold,” which means you can find it on the top half of the first page — the bottom half …

Nvidia CEO Not Above Celebrating Intel's Misfortune [Memo] — A number of tech companies are rejoicing over the Federal Trade Commission's complaint against Intel today, none more so than Nvidia. — A top player in the market for graphics processing units, Nvidia stands to gain quite a bit …

More great news sources to discover in Fast Flip — Three months ago, we launched Google Fast Flip, a service that seeks to make reading articles online as fast and simple as flipping through a magazine or newspaper. It's still early in this experiment, which is why Fast Flip remains in Google Labs.

Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones — $26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected — WASHINGTON — Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need …

Exclusive: Ex-MySpace Execs Launch Gravity Into Private Beta — Back in March 2009 a trio of MySpace execs -COO Amit Kapur, SVP Steve Pearman and SVP Jim Benedetto - left to begin working on a new startup. — In May we learned that the company, then called Blue Rover Labs, had raised $10 million in funding.

Craigslist Unclogs Yahoo Pipes — Two weeks ago we wrote about the story of developer Romy Maxwell, who had built a Craigslist mashup using Yahoo Pipes. A few weeks after sending his app to Craigslist founder Craig Newmark (who forwarded it to other members of the Craigslist team) …

VLC for Mac development on verge of demise? — All work on the Mac version of VLC may soon have to come to a halt, says VideoLAN. VLC is an open-source media playback application, notable for supporting both audio and video, and formats missing from official playback tools made by Apple and Microsoft.

The iPhone Goes to War — Is the iPhone going to war? — On Wednesday at the 2009 Intelligence Warfighting Summit in Tucson, Raytheon, the military contractor, announced an iPhone application that tracks friends and foes, shows their positions on live, real time maps and provides secure communications.

How Facebook Squeezes More From Its Machines — Back in June, during an onstage conversation with me at our Structure 09 conference, Facebook VP of Technical Operations Jonathan Heiliger lamented how chip makers such as Intel and AMD don't quite understand the needs of web behemoths like his company …

Motorola Backflip/Enzo Pictures & Details! — We just got a big scoop from an anonymous tipster that will leave you doing backflips... or, uh... Enzos. If you remember our first Motorola Backflip article, you'll remember a unique/odd form factor that left people guessing exactly how it would work.

Yahoo! France striking today — Despite multiplying its profit by more than 300% in the third quarter of 2009, mostly through cost-cutting, Yahoo! is planning to lay-off all its engineers currently located in France. This would put an end to the Yahoo! R&D centre in Grenoble inaugurated …

RepairPal Grabs $4 Million For Google Health For Cars — Startup RepairPal, an auto repair and maintenance information site, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Tugboat Ventures, with Rick Keister, David Strohm, Mark Goines, and Michael Torres participating.

EA to launch three big franchise games on the iPhone — Electronic Arts continues its offensive on the iPhone today as it announces the impending launches of three major games on the iPhone: Need for Speed Shift, Spore Creatures, and the Simpsons game. — All three games could be called second-generation iPhone games.

Celebrating Anniversaries on Facebook — As much as I enjoy celebrating my birthday every year with my friends, I often regard the anniversary of my relationship with my significant other to be even more important. — At Facebook, we're always looking to make it easier to share and recognize such milestones.

Smule, creator of hit iPhone music apps, raises $8M more — Smule, the company behind popular, music-based iPhone apps like Ocarina and I am T-Pain, has raised $8 million in a third round of funding. — The Menlo Park, Calif. company's apps usually take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities in cool …

Introducing Personas 2.0 — Personas 2.0 offers a cleaner look, clearer navigation, and easier ways to discover and engage new art. Check out the new site here. — The Mozilla Labs team launched Personas 1.0 in March with the idea that it shouldn't be hard to make your internet browser more fun and personal.

Google's Nexus One: World-Changer or Just a Bad Idea? — Google's Nexus One smartphone is a shot across the bow of many entrenched competitors, enough to make us wonder whether Google has some master plan for world domination or has merely gone loopy. — If you combine all the speculation …

The Times and Bit.ly Roll Out ‘nyti.ms’ Short Links — Eagle-eyed fans of Twitter and The New York Times may have noticed a change in the Web addresses used to share some articles from The Times's Web site on Twitter. Beginning Wednesday, the links are compressed into a custom New York Times URL that begins with “nyti.ms.”

CEO language misleads analysts' ratings, study confirms — Business analysts, who are paid to dryly evaluate and forecast the financial performance of the companies they cover, turn out to be vulnerable to what one research group has dubbed “charismatic” language in the CEOs' vision statements.

Lawyers: Google execs not liable for abuse video — ROME — Four Google executives should not be held responsible for a video posted online that showed teenagers abusing an autistic youth in Turin, their lawyers argued Wednesday in an Italian court. — The executives are being tried …

OpenID Ends 2009 With 1 Billion Users — At the close of a whiz-bang year, OpenID has a lot to be proud of. — With a community of 9 million sites that use OpenID logins and 1 billion individual users, OpenID has effectively revolutionized the way we are able to create and maintain portable identities.

WIND goes live in Canada with $35 unlimited data — Canadian provider WIND Mobile formally launched today and became the fourth major cell carrier in the country. The company pitches itself as the antithesis of typical cellphone carriers and promises none of the hidden costs of incumbents …

Diabetes Meter Mates With PC to Track Trends — This week's column was, in a sense, written in blood. It's a review of a new consumer medical device, and to test it, I had to prick my fingertips several times a day to produce a droplet of blood that the gadget could analyze.

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PSD2 Compliance in Zoho Books — The Revised Payment Services Directive, also known as the PSD2, is a set of regulatory guidelines laid down by the European Union (EU) for finance, banking, and payment service companies.

Google Fi - a phone plan, by Google — We felt that most phone plans just weren't made with you in mind. So that's why we built Google Fi with features that real people actually want. Click to learn more.